This corporate drone OL photoshoot had actually been in the works for quite some time. The goal was not to portray some untouchable, high-powered corporate executive, but rather an ordinary desk worker viewed through an anime lens. Watching anime, female office worker characters always overflow with distinct personality, keeping up an impeccably polished aura even when buying bento boxes at convenience stores. I wanted to blend that distinctive 2D anime style with an authentic, everyday supermarket environment for a stylized visual experiment. To match the working-drone concept, the wardrobe relied on the most basic short-sleeved white collared shirt without extraneous embellishments. Unbuttoning the top two collar buttons introduced breathing room to avoid looking overly rigid, neatly echoing the effortless, casual styling frequently seen in anime illustrations. The employee badge around my neck and the blue inventory clipboard in hand served as core narrative props—the moment that black lanyard slipped on, the soul of an overworked employee immediately took over.
To complement the Anime cosplay theme, the makeup embraced substantial stylistic exaggeration. I chose large-diameter contact lenses and blended dark shading across the outer corners of the eyes to deepen the gaze. The base makeup pursued a cool-toned matte texture, which paired flawlessly with the supermarket's harsh fluorescent lighting. While this exaggerated anime makeup might look slightly dramatic at close conversational distances in real life, facing the lens—especially under wide-angle optical distortion—it struck precisely the non-standard proportions of an anime illustration. Because the supermarket was rather warm and stuffy, setting spray and loose powder were applied liberally to keep oily shine and makeup meltdowns at bay, sustaining that cool, slightly detached yet innocent anime countenance.
The shooting location was set in the dairy aisle of a large supermarket. Rows upon rows of yogurt and stacked cartons of whole milk on the shelves naturally radiated everyday slice-of-life realism. The cold white fluorescent tubes beating down proved ideal for capturing that slightly fatigued environment familiar to desk workers. We deliberately shot with a wide-angle lens; the optical stretching toward the edges of the frame created a highly dynamic, subjective point of view while pushing the shelf aisles far into the background, enriching depth of field to make it feel as if viewed through a security surveillance camera or a bystander's first-person perspective.
During actual shooting, quite a few hurdles had to be managed. Shoppers constantly came and went while I had to pretend to calmly take inventory of stock. Clutching that blue clipboard and scrutinizing the spreadsheets, I honestly couldn't decipher a single line. Facing a wide-angle lens, facial expressions required delicate control, as the slightest tilt easily warped facial proportions. The white shirt also tended to blow out highlights under intense overhead illumination, demanding continual adjustments to standing angles and fill-light positions. Although the process was a bit exhausting, transplanting anime elements into the most grounded, everyday environment created an immensely satisfying gap contrast. No lavish studio sets were required—an ordinary supermarket yielded an exclusive anime narrative all its own. This everyday feeling of breaking through the fourth wall is precisely why I love exploring real-world location shoots so much.